For project03, I decided to re-design the website for the Yale School of Art (https://www.art.yale.edu/), the concept for the website is that it's a wiki website - which means the website exists as an ongoing collaborative experiment in digital publishing and information sharing. This particular function means that all members of the School of Art community have the ability to add new, and edit most existing content.
For the first version that I created, I wanted to stay true to the conceptual concept that the website portrays so the design layout is a bit more expressive than I usually would do and the background image is collage art of artistic elements with a bit of a grungy feel to it (I created the collage art in Photoshop). I noticed that the website isn't your traditional, legible, and minimal layout some people are used to but I think that is the artistic statement that goes behind the website. It was really hard to for me to design something with the vintage feel the original website has so I tried my best to balance a bit of my style into the layout while still thinking of something an art student would find deeper meaning in, the idea of illegibility and a hectic website layout would make a designer angry but conceptual art is art in which the idea or concept presented by the artist is considered more important than its appearance or execution, so I was thinking more of the audience rather than the user design behind version one.
The second version consists of a layout that is more my style as a designer and focused more on legibility and minimal elements. While doing research, I noticed that I was interested more in simple and clean designs; popular websites were successful because they focused on the user experience rather than the message of art and helped the audience navigate throughout the website in a simple and straight-forward manner. That was my main concern for the re-design, so instead of catering to the audience of Yale School of Art and I decided to influence my creative process by making sure the purpose of the re-designed website was not only to keep current students interested but possibly future students, parents, and any potential people who are just browsing to show interest as well.
Both designs are pretty much the opposite but each serve different purposes and cater to different crowds. I hope you guys enjoy the layout designs and looking forward to using the feedback!
